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Click to close Image by: Nancy Richmond Overview of Silverton in January. Click to close Image by: Nancy Richmond Click to close Image by: Nancy Richmond The Kendall Mountain ski area on the east side of town stays busy on a Sunday Afternoon. Click to close Image by: Nancy Richmond A sign posts the avalanche danger on a building in Silverton. Click to close Image by: Nancy Richmond An old building stands next to the train station.

It starts at just less than 10,000 feet elevation. From there, the descent from either Red Mountain Pass or Molas Pass is a slow attention-commanding drive that takes you into a town that, when considering the towns surrounding it, is a gem in the San Juan Mountains that just might defy expectations of gentrification.

Here, sitting in a valley mixed with pine trees and mining remnants, is Silverton, Colo., a rugged and often unforgiving mountain town that has endured more than one boom-and-bust cycle. No matter the down times, the town seems to hold on, sometimes by a thin thread and other times by a finger's width of a rope. It's the kind of place that spits out the weak and makes the tough tougher - and it's most often winter season when it takes place. Just to get to Silverton you have to cross three mean passes. Once you are there, it takes grit and determination to endure the weather, politics, economy and community. You could say that throughout Silverton's history, the town was built and been kept alive by mutineers, not conformists.

Indeed, you could say many things about Silverton. That's what makes it hard to pigeonhole. You can ask many people how to characterize it and get a mixture of descriptions. But if you break them down to their rawest meanings, it seems that they mean mostly the same thing.

The best characterization, though, is one that Jonathan Thompson, a former Silverton resident for 10 years and former newspaper publisher, shared.

"It's a combination of ?Northern Exposure' meets ?The Shining,'" he says.

Assuming roles

Thompson is sure to point out that the characterization isn't originally his. Someone else explained Silverton in that way. It sticks because it fits.

People who live in the town are quirky and abstruse. They know their somewhat-isolated town allows unconventional behavior that helps maintain an air of mystery. Their townspeople tolerate it, because demanding otherwise would leave them lonely. Even though the nearest town is Ouray, just a short drive over Red Mountain Pass, Silverton maintains enough distance to stand out as a secluded place like Cicely, Alaska, where the 1990s "Northern Exposure" television dramedy took place. Wildlife is a common sight, right alongside with 75mm Howitzers on U.S. Highway 550 to blow away avalanches.

Year-round residents have their individual roles, in which they contribute some sort of character to the town. Those who are outsiders or part-time residents remain on the periphery of the cast of characters. After all, they likely live in Silverton in the summer season, and that's a wildly different time than the dead of winter.

That's where "The Shining" comes into play.

Silverton has many of the elements of the classic 1980 horror film. In the film, a tightly wound, angry ex-teacher takes a job at a hotel. The hotel's manager warns the guy that he'll be snowbound throughout the winter and have to endure a wicked case of cabin fever. The manager uses an example of a former hotel worker who went crazy and killed his own wife, two kids and himself. The incident ends up haunting the guy and his family, and he in fact goes insane.

Comparing Silverton to "The Shining" isn't about calling the residents insane. But it speaks to how isolation and ruthless winters can wear on people, and by the time mid-April rolls around, people can sometimes be teetering on madness because of the weather and distance from the outside world.

This characterization is what may keep some would-be residents at bay. Now that Silverton's year-round population is about only 500 (it peaked in the early 1900s at 5,000), it is helping to stave off rampant growth and development that is gripping the Intermountain West.

Sure, Silverton is changing. It must. It is no longer the thriving mining town that drew prospectors from around the world. The last mine closed in 1991. Sunnyside Mine was the final bastion of an era that lingers now mainly in remnants. Its closure profoundly affected nearly every aspect of the town's viability. It was the county's biggest taxpayer. But it's only one of the many defining moments of a changing town. You could say that while its neighboring towns have slipped into New West, Silverton is stuck in the middle. It's neither Old West nor New West.

Making a living

Few people remaining in Silverton have seen as much change as Joe Todeschi. Believed now to be Silverton's oldest and longest resident, the 92-year-old is a rarity: He was born and raised in this town. Excepting the four years he served as an aerial engineer in World War II, Todeschi has always lived here.

His mother bought the house in which Todeschi lives in 1934. The white house on Empire Street, hidden largely by big bushes, is the only house he's ever lived in. The dated interior is modest, with old black-and-white photographs of the town's heady days. On one wall is an aging picture of an expansive view of Silverton. Surprisingly, the view isn't much different than if you took the same photograph today. Place the two photos side by side and it would cut out the decades of a flourishing town. In many respects, it is as if the town is right back where it started.

As Todeschi puts it, "his people" arrived in Silverton in 1885 from Austria. His aunt ran a boarding house and his father was a miner. Todeschi grew up in the defining years of Silverton. Like his family, Todeschi worked at a young age. He started gandy dancing (working the levers an open rail car) on the railroad and then began working in the mines - Sunnyside, Eureka, Mayflower, Idarato and others.

"I did everything I could to make a living," Todeschi says. "We lived a simple life, and that's all there was to it."

In reminiscing about Silverton's early days, Todeschi talks in sound bites and aphorisms. Repeatedly, he says he doesn't think his life was exciting enough to be part of a story about Silverton.

"I don't think I'm that interesting," he says. "I've been here too damn long."

Of course, Todeschi is failing to realize that his status in this town is one of legacy. His sharp wit and memory paint a picture of Silverton's past that helps those who live there today have a sense of a town still clinging to the past. Todeschi recalls a moment when Allen Nossaman, a longtime resident and former publisher of The Silverton Standard & The Miner, the town's newspaper, sat in Todeschi's kitchen and recorded his memories.

"I said to Allen, ?You know, this doesn't matter. These days are over. I'm not that interesting, and what I'm telling you isn't that interesting,'" he says. "Boy, Allen stood up and started yelling at me, saying that it was all we had left."

Journalist excellence

Nossaman was right. Now deceased, the revered journalist, historian and activist helped preserve some of the town's most important memories and stories. His work as the newspaper's publisher is one unique aspect about Silverton that Thompson uses as an example when talking about his 10 years living there. Today, Thompson is editor of the highly respected High Country News, based in Paonia, Colo. But in 1996, he moved to Silverton to work at the Silverton Standard & The Miner. After a year, Thompson left that job but remained living there. It was a time, he says, when Silverton was in turbulence. It had been only five years since the last mine closed, and the town was still defined as a mining place and had an economy that depended on mining.

"It was about this time that there was an acknowledgement that mining was dead," says Thompson.

That admission was difficult. Its residents were uncertain of what the future would be. Of course, at this time the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad was traveling to Silverton, bringing with it thousands of tourists throughout the summer season. Residents had to shift to capitalizing on the tourism industry and shift their mindsets to being mostly a tourist trap.

If some thought that the transition would "Aspenize" the place or run the old-timers out of town, they proved to be wrong. When Thompson began working for the newspaper, he discovered new things about the town.

"I was surprised by how eclectic the community is, in spite of the fact people though it was a dying town. That wasn't the case, and it's not now," he says.

As Thompson came to know the town better, he saw with a journalist's eye the peccadilloes of its residents and community at large. So in 2000, he started the twice-monthly San Juan Mountain Journal. A couple of years ago, Thompson wrote that starting a second newspaper in Silverton was "irresponsible, insane, idealistic and occasionally a bit of an adrenaline rush." But he doesn't regret it.

"I felt residents were not being served by The Standard at the time," Thompson said recently. "I felt Silverton was a great place that was in transition. I didn't think the newspaper was getting that."

Knowing the town well enough to step up the journalism, Thompson says he was trying to return journalistic excellence to Silverton. Typically, he rightly explains, small towns aren't places where newspaper journalism quality is superior or renowned. Silverton was always different. The weekly Standard & The Miner is so named because it is a blended paper born of two separate ones. The La Plata Miner was first published in 1875. In the 1889s, the Silverton Standard came on the scene (and, reportedly, 13 other newspapers arose to compete). In 1922, the two newspapers merged to ensure success, and it is now Colorado's oldest continuous newspaper and business.

As its editor and publisher from 2002 to 2006, Thompson watched the town move to a tourist-driven economy - and the diverging personalities of town residents who were responding to the move. "It was surprising to me that strength of how battles were played out. It could get personal," Thompson says.

Town meetings were - and still are, according to residents - spirited. Often, residents would fight it out a town meeting but then be found sharing a cup of coffee at the Avalanche Coffee House or a beer at a local bar.

STRONG WILLS AND KINSHIP

That's often been the case, Todeschi says. People fought hard for their livelihoods, because they knew no one else would. His first evidence of how strong-willed Silverton's residents were was around 1995, Todeschi says, when the Mayflower Mill closed. It was the first of many busts that the town endured, especially because the mining industry was so closely tied to world economic markets. Not to mention that Spanish influenza epidemic that hit Silverton in 1918, which killed some 150 residents (when the population was about 1,500) and reduced mining production by about $60,000.

"I liked it better in older days," says Todeschi. "We had a more stable economy. Many more people were living here and they were here to make money. The saying really should be ?The root of all evil is not having money.'"

And then there's the weather. "People were different. We are spoiled now. The streets are plowed now. They weren't back then."

He says this as the piles of plowed snow in Silverton sit at about 5 feet high. Recent January snowstorms pummeled Silverton, closing nearby passes and once again isolating the hamlet from the rest of the world. Such an occurrence always makes the news - locally and statewide. Even with technological advances ranging from weather predictions to snow stabilization, non-Silverton residents continue to be astonished that it can happen. But Todeschi makes a historical point: "This storm is what it used to be like. This is what happens in Silverton."

Indeed, it is. And it's precisely the weather that has been a boost for the town's economy in the last 8 to 10 years. Most famously is the opening of Silverton Mountain ski area. The one-of-a-kind backcountry ski area where only the best of skiers go to shralp the gnar has brought Silverton into the minds of people across the nation, even the world. Since it opened in 2001, excitement and controversy has surrounded Silverton Mountain, owned by Aaron and Jen Brill. It has also instigated a flurry of press about this tiny town. National newspapers and magazines continue to write about the ski area, always tangentially mentioning the town itself. Lately, it seems as if there's a story about Silverton almost monthly. If it isn't about the ski area, it is about the burgeoning businesses - some of which specifically moved to Silverton because of the climate and topography. Among them are ScottyBob skis, Venture Snowboards and Mountain Boy Sledworks.

These businesses are the kinds that are playing pivotal roles in exposing Silverton to people beyond Southwest Colorado. Feelings are mixed. Kris Barnard, a tourist from suburban Chicago who was recently visiting Silverton and picking up a cup of coffee from Avalanche Coffee House, says he was hesitant to come here because he expected hostility toward outsiders. Like others, he read about Silverton in such publications as The New York Times, Powder Magazine and National Geographic. He came to see what the fuss is about.

"It's pretty much what I expected, at least as far as the small-town feel goes. But I can't imagine living here. You don't have many choices here," Barnard says. He had hopes to ski at Silverton Mountain, but eventually backed out of his idea because of the level of skill it requires. He says now that he's seen the mountains around the town, he thinks they live up to their reputation.

Former editor Thompson says he's surprised that people still want to read about Silverton Mountain. He concedes that it's been a boon to the town's economy and image, but he also thinks its impact has been overblown. On both sides.

"It always has been," he says. "Neither expectation has been true. It hasn't been the savior that people thought it would be, nor has it been the new thing that would turn Silverton into a Telluride."

Thompson attributes it to the town's lack of amenities. For those who find Silverton has just enough that it needs, they come here. Those often are the hard-core recreationists who choose passion over material needs. Thompson calls many of Silverton's newcomers "amenity migrants" - people who go where they can find what they need in the moment. Even with all of the press that may or may not be responsible for people moving to Silverton, it doesn't appear the town is poised to top a list of Outside Magazine's "best places to live" list. As Thompson says, it's too cold, there's no airport, little infrastructure exists, and it's too isolated.

So what kept Todeschi here?

"I had an opportunity to move away from here. I probably could have made a lot more money elsewhere. You know, we've all got our troubles," he says. "But I wasn't too enthused about going somewhere else."

When it comes down to it, he realizes he shares perhaps one of the things that brought every other newcomer to town - and that there is a kinship stronger than he knows.

"You can depend on those mountains being there," he says gesturing to Kendall Mountain. "They are harsh in the winter but they sure are nice in the summer."

Amy Maestas is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest magazine.